An American Merchant Marine Veteran Bagpiper is Going to Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON -- Jody Watson of Lee's Summit, Missouri is marching for the cause of both the Canadian and American Merchant Marine Veterans of World War II. Jody is determined to tell any member of the United States Congress who will listen, about how Canada paid all of their WWII Merchant Marine Veterans a $20,000 bonus after a hunger strike was threatened in Ottawa.

Joseph Watson, who his friends call Jody, was born in Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada. He left home at the age of 15, went to Halifax, Nova Scotia and joined the Merchant Navy, then sailed the Atlantic for about a year and a half in convoy. When World War II ended, he got three medals from the Department of Veterans Affairs in Canada, so he wrote them asking about getting some education. They said he was not entitled because he was not a veteran. This really made him mad, so he applied for papers to the U.S. only to discover injustices against Merchant Seamen there, too.

The American Merchant Mariners lost 1 in 25 who served, which was the highest death rate of any branch of the services in WWII. Denied the rights of a Veteran until 1988, the American Merchant Mariners lost out on the Servicemen's Adjustment Act of 1944 (G.I. Bill). By court order in 1988, Mariners gained the status of Veterans but have never received the valuable college education benefits and the resulting $250,000 in increased lifetime income from them. The loss of other benefits, especially medical coverage from 1945 - 1988, is immense.

Jody's bagpipes will play loud and clear as he brings attention to the Legislators that it is time to correct these injustices and properly take care of their old Veterans who put their lives on the line. Between his melodious Scotch-Irish bagpipe tunes, he cries out, "Shame, Shame, Shame on you for not paying any G.I. compensation for the few surviving American Mariners now over 80 years of age."